Meese: I Erred On Financial Filing

July 10, 1987|By Timothy J. McNulty, Chicago Tribune.

WASHINGTON — Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese claimed Thursday his failure to list assets in an investment partnership was ``inadvertent,`` and he accused a Democratic senator of using a subcommittee hearing for a ``partisan political attack.``

Meese denied any wrongdoing or even the appearance of wrongdoing in his financial statements and in his relationship with officials of Wedtech, a government contractor now under investigation by both the Justice Department and New York state officials. At the same time, Meese is under scrutiny by an independent counsel examining whether he took actions as a White House official to favor the Bronx, N.Y., contractor.

During his first extensive congressional appearance related to the investigation, Meese repeatedly defended his financial disclosure statements as accurate. On Monday he released copies of those statements showing an initial investment of about $54,000 that yielded more than $35,000 in profits in about two years.

The attorney general also bristled at suggestions of impropriety. ``In my opinion it was legal and proper, and I was acting in good faith,`` he declared.

Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), however, said that Meese`s failure to list the limited partnership in which Meese had invested his family money, and his relationship with two men who were closely tied to Wedtech, smacked of conflict of interest.

``It seems to me you`ve a problem again with an appearance issue,`` said Levin, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight on Government Management. ``Only you know if there is more to it than that . . .``

Upon leaving the hearing, Meese said, ``Obviously Sen. Levin used this hearing for a partisan, political attack. It was obvious that he had no substance whatsoever. That came out in the questions and the long, detailed, distorted characterizations of the facts that were made.``

Earlier in the day David Martin, director of the Office of Government Ethics, told the subcommittee that Meese`s listing on his 1985 and 1986 financial disclosure forms of what Meese has called a ``limited blind partnership`` did not meet ethics law requirements but constituted no violation of federal law.

Martin said that although Meese should have disclosed the assets in that partnership, his own ethics office did not catch the omission.

Meese`s dealings with two former Wedtech consultants are a key part of the investigation in New York and by the independent counsel.

One of the consultants, E. Robert Wallach, is an attorney and longtime friend of Meese`s. Wallach introduced Meese to the other figure in the probe, W. Franklyn Chinn, a financial adviser who invested Meese`s personal funds and who also became a director of Wedtech.

The parallel investigations are trying to determine whether Meese received any financial benefit through his association with Wallach and Chinn. Four former Wedtech officers have already pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe state and federal officials to help Wedtech.

Meese acknowledged that while he was a presidential adviser in 1982 he received memos from Wallach about Wedtech and he directed an aide to make sure that Wedtech received a ``fair hearing`` from the government, a process he called routine. The company later received a $32 million U.S. Army contract to build small engines.